Been there, Done that

Few days back I had a pleasure of attending a conference where CEO of our company was the chief speaker. As expected from any Leadership session there was lots on talks on “what to be done” and “what not to be done” to become a successful leader. But unlike my expectation Mr. CEO spoke on different paradigm, which I felt comes from a true experience. The words he spoke came from the horse’s mouth, as in; he preached what he had practiced in his own life. There were many real life experiences he spoke on, but what moved my soul was following two points:

1) Trading time for memories:
All of us work hard in life to earn money, so that we can enjoy life. We also try to save a part of it for our post retirement days. We also do some exercise so that we can remain healthy in golden phase of our life. Also we abstain ourselves from consuming non healthy stuff just because they should not have their side effects later on. In short we consciously or sub consciously invest in our future.

But just ample bank balance, good physique and sound inner constitution does not ensure a great life. We also need moments to cherish in later part of our life (also much before that as well, when we take some time out of our busy schedule and take account of life in hindsight). But are we taking enough efforts to create Tradable memories in life. When is the last time we took break from routine life and went out with our family on 2-3 days vacation? When is the last time we did something really crazy or something without any selfish motif? When is the last time clicked our own photographs while dancing, while laughing, while crying and framed them in our personal album?

We can’t say that we will start creating tradable memories when we’ll be 40-45 years old. One has to start investing in memories right from adulthood. Clock is ticking but are we creating enough tradable memories.

2) Unintended Consequences:
It starts with an anecdote….

There was a fisherman who was fishing on the bank of a calm, blue water river with peace all around. While fishing he caught the sight of a frog which was also swimming and having a great time in calm waters. Everything was going smooth until came a snake and grabbed the frog in its mouth and disturbed the tranquility of the serene environment. Fisherman saw that the sad frog is struggling for its life. He thought frog will lose its life if he doesn’t take any effort to save it. So he pulled the snake from its tail and took the frog out of its mouth. Now the snake became sad because it lost the prey. Fisherman tried to make that snake happy as well by pouring some scotch in its mouth. Snake tasted the scotch, liked its taste and swam away from there. Now everything became all right once again. But happiness didn’t last for long. To the shock and surprise of the fisherman the snake came again with two frogs in its mouth and showed it to fisherman (that’s why they say keep away from alcohol).

In this story, fisherman tries to make everyone happy by doing something good but he faces harsh implications of it in the later part. Similarly in life, how so ever we may try to behave good with everyone but there are some unintended consequences from every good action we do. In short, keep doing your right job in life and don’t care much about going on pleasing everyone.

Endnote: What connects Kingfisher’s Spirits and Airline business? Both take their customers to a high.